Oolon Colluphid

Righty-ho, to <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=57&SUBMIT=Go" target="_blank">Science and Skepticism</a> with you then .

TTFN, Oolon

Francois Tremblay

Geeze, this jojo-san is just one huge fallacy from ignorance. How does he get up in the morning ?

Asha'man

I once heard a definition of God that I could live with: God is entropy.

If you want to define god as nothing but natural laws, then most of us here won't have much of a problem with that, since those natural laws clearly exist.

(Especially since nothing about gravity is telling me to kneel down and worship it. )

But is that really a mystic force? Is there any intelligence behind it? Doesn’t appear to be the case.

Theories of where natural laws come from are more philosophy than science. Unless you can find some observable consequence of your thinking, there isn’t much to do except think about it.

People often make a big deal about how perfect natural laws are for our existence, and try to draw a conclusion from this. This is easy to refute, however, since if those laws weren’t perfect for us, we wouldn’t even be here to ask the question. Since we are here, the laws must be ok. Alternately, we don’t really know if changing those laws might still allow us to ask that same question, but it would really be a different us doing the asking.

You can rephrase this as a question about the probability of things coming out just right. However, the probability of something happening, given that is has already happened, is exactly 1. What is the probability that I was born on a particular day in a particular city to a particular couple? While there are billions of possible combinations of those factors, does that make me particularly unlikely to exist? After all, I had to be born somewhere, right?

Jerry Smith

The author of the article I referenced to for you, rendered a highly mathematical model into a layman's ordinary-language explanation. You say there was no explanation, I say there was. It was not a full, complete, and precise explanation: we will both have to go back to college and do some serious study before we could understand the full, complete, and precise explanation, but it does explain that most natural laws are a direct result of the simplicity of the universe. If the universe were more complicated we would have different physical constants and different natural laws.

The author is not trying to explain the 20 billion years of history that brought the universe into its current state. He is elucidating the cosmological theories of the beginning of the universe, and how the physical laws came about that brought us to the current state of the universe.


When we use the only definition of time that truly makes sense in the universe, and apply it to the question of the 'time before the universe', we find that, by our definition, there WAS NO TIME before the universe.

The question of 'where the big bang came from', if meaningful at all, must remain unanswered. Speculations abound, ranging from a singularity black-hole in a parent universe to an infinitely recurring universe, a multiverse, and supernatural causes. Since this is outside the possible realm of human knowledge (our knowledge being limited to the inside of this universe - as if that isn't enough!!), the speculations will have to remain just that.

Some of your questions about energy and laws of thermodynamics were directly answered in the article. You may wish to re-read it.

Going forward, let's do a thought experiment. Lets pretend that the scientists had not yet discovered the causes of the physical laws, etc, etc.. let's pretend that all we can tell scientifically about the universe only goes back as far as the evolution of Eukaryotes....

Would it be necessary then to invoke God as the explanation for everything else - everything else that we did not understand?

No.

God is sometimes just a word that could adequately be defined as "the reason for everything we don't understand." In that respect, God would exist - If the things we don't understand happened, or are happening, then of course the reason for them exists. If we name that reason "God," then certainly God exists. But this is confusing. So many people have ideas about the term God that don't have anything to do with reasons things are the way they are, that that it would be simpler to use the term 'ignorance' to refer to the things we have no knowledge of, and reserve the term 'God' for the character that some people have constructed in their heads - the character who (depending on whose head s/he is in) is a merciful, and wise parent-figure, or the best magician in the world, or a spiteful, veangeful, extra-creepy megalomaniac.

That way, when I discuss the things I don't understand, people won't get confused and think I am talking about their imaginary friend!!

Speaking of which, it might be better to ditch the term "God" altogether (since no one can agree on what It is like anyway), and choose another term like... I don't know... when I was 6 I had an imaginary friend named Phillip... We could call it Phillip! And if everybody doesn't imagine Phillip the same way I do, well then Phillip is going to be VERY ANGRY!!

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

jojo-sa

Exactly he explains what he sees, dont answer any questions.

Time is for sure relative to the speed You are travelling at. Eintein's theroy of relativity.again explainig things we see.

My point exactly .We dont know the unkown before, what we know is what is here and this is how it happenened and it works like this. accept this this is reality. the other things nobody knows.

Which is exactly why i say Atheist are what they are , because they have lack of knowledge. Its like a guy who studes one year of medicine is much more dangerous than someone who studied nothing.

I like this angle.I say well there are many things we dont know, but when looking at the universe we can see that hey there is some pattern, there is some reason for things, things follow rules, and hey it works like its working, but still there is reason to it.everything functions just how it shold function based on the laws we observe.

Thus there is a pattern and flow a design some my call it that happened, some how, yip it happened and is what it is now.this pattern gave life to all u infidels on here who cant answer the questions.

I say this system is a sytem with rules that did not just come about hap hazzardly, because what we see is not hap hazzard and there are answers and for sure there are some creator force or whatever you want to call it, who knows the answers. because we don not live in a choatic universe, things follow laws. laws of nature , laws of physics and whatever other way you claim to call it.

so some say hey out of chaos we can get non chaos, well this dont explain much. point is what we have now is a well organised system that works according the rules it must work.

and notice the words "orginised" organised on its own?

organised naturally?

what does that mean? naturally according to laws we see. yet again more orgnisation.

Just think some more and do some more research you will see the patterns..

Quetzal

Have we reached singularity (i.e, DNFTT)?

Jerry Smith

(This refers to <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html" target="_blank">This Page</a>)

He answers the question you had about why the natural laws we have exist and why they are different than they are. This was your second "original" question.

He does not answer where the big bang came from, as that is unanswerable - by science, or religion - it is completely outside the sphere of human knowledge. A naturalist guess is as good as a supernaturalist guess.

He does not delineate, point by point, the history of the universe after the big bang. As you seem to already understand (I hope), all of the chaos and the perceived order present in the universe today can be explained in terms of the physical laws, and he does explain why they are such as they are. If you remember, your first original question was how life came from "pure" atoms, and the answer was all in terms of the natural laws. If you remember, that is why you asked about how the natural laws came about.

There are questions about nature that have not been answered in detail yet.

Is your God hiding in the unsequenced genome of some extinct creature? Is your God to be found in the mathematical relationship between the electro-weak, strong, and gravitational forces?

There are speculative questions about the state of things "before" the Universe (or "outside" the Universe, or etc..) that cannot be answered.

If that is where your God is hiding, he will not and cannot be found.

The questions you have asked mostly concern how perceived order (i.e. life) arose from the chaotic universe that we live in. These are answered. They ask how the natural laws that can bring about life came to exist. Those questions have been answered. The last question, is "what about before the universe" - this cannot be answered: only guessed at.

This one question - where did the big bang come from - the single question for which the answer cannot known; is this where you make your stand and say, because we cannot answer it, Allah is the answer? If so, then that makes Allah a synonym for ignorance. Who in their right mind would worship ignorance?

Jojo-sa,
You have a very acute mind (if it is somewhat dulled by creationist "first-cause" arguments and "complexity" muddle"). I hope that you will use your sharp mind to go about learning science and what it can tell us about the universe. Even if you do not do it by profession, you would still find it a fascinating hobby. The forums on this board would not be a bad start. The TalkOrigins.org website has scads of interesting material. Of course, the best place is the natural sciences or mathematics wing of your local college or university, but that is a luxury some cannot afford. I know I can't!

[ January 31, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>